Category Archives: Animation

My brother kindly did the reference footage for this, but won’t let put it on youtube because he says he looks like an idiot.

I was aiming to have the red arm look as though it was reaching out to grab someone, as this was initially going to be combined with Amy’s running Malcolm as part of our lip sync animation and interacting between two character’s animation.

This time I stuck to what the book suggested and started planning it all out then doing the core poses of the face- though I’m really only focussed on the mouth for what Amy and I have planned.

Planning:

These are the key mouth shapes that are made when the line, “Here’s an FYI, you’re all gonna die screaming” is sung.

“He”

“urs”

“ah”

“n”

“eff”

“y”

“i”

“ur”

“ah”

“ll”

“guh”

“nah”

“di”

“ss”

“cre”

“mi”

“ng”

I have sketched out what shape the mouth should be in when making these sounds in my sketchbook. I used the images I had found for mouth shapes, and reference footage that I had taken to get the most accurate mouth movement.

By referring to a page I found in online of Preston Blair’s walk cycles, I started blocking out the poses for my character.

I then just kept going back and tried to add more subtly to Jack’s movements to give him a bit more swagger, then I showed it to Amy who gave me some helpful feedback on it which let me go back and tweak the movement on the upper body to make it less robotic:

Maybe the upper area of the torso is a bit too stiff, some follow through on the upper arms when they move with the shoulders could help (so they go back beyond the position of the shoulder so it’s not so straight/static?)

Also maybe there should be more pressure on the foot when it contacts the ground?

Outcome

Feedback

Lower leg position to come forward a bit more on stop

Knees should come in on the step back

Corrected Version

Video reference: My brother won’t allow me to upload it.

I changed the y rotation of the foot to -10 at the back position, compared to the -20 degrees at the forward position to bring the knees in closer.

I then moved the foot forward to 5 instead of 4.

The video reference helped to make sure the animation was smoother and more natural.

I tried to get the mouth shapes for the various words that the character has to say, but then I realised that I was making more work for myself because I would then have to adjust all the key frames on the time slider for the various facial muscles to fit them in the correct time frame.

There’s already a clear improvement from the first attempts, however, it noticeably falls out of sync towards the end. I had been so focused on moving the lips that I forgot that the chin moves as well when people speak, so when I went back to add it in, it interfered with the lip movements.

The book cited below really helped to plan out and then improve my lip sync, although, when I only got it after I had initially got the rough shapes, so I used it to tweak the movements.

I’m going to start again, so there is a good foundation to build upon.

NOTE: Towards the end of the jump it looks a little bit like the rig slides to a stop, but looking in the side view it is actually off the ground, just the perspective makes it a little hard to see, this is why I added the boxes to show him landing.